TRENDING: Blockchain And Loyalty’s $7B Problem

The post-holiday, mid-winter blahs can make people antsy to jet set off and travel to new locations. When they get to their destinations, payments platforms are prepped and ready to unlock traveler spending.

It turns out consumers aren’t the only ones on the move, though. Money, business and loyalty reward points are increasingly showing signs of roaming from one venue to another.

The latest Payments as a Service Tracker™ charts the newest developments in the space, including a blockchain-based loyalty program that enables reward points to travel across franchises, a digital currency remittances pilot and more.

Around the Payments as a Service world

The past few weeks delivered several notable disruptions to the world of international payments.

Alipay is continuing its global expansion, forging new partnerships with French apparel brand Lacoste and Verifone. The collaboration enables Chinese tourists at U.S.-based Lacoste stores to make mobile payments at point of sale using the same platform they use at home. Under the partnership, mobile point of sale (mPOS) terminals powered by Verifone would enable Alipay’s QR code-based payments at Lacoste stores.

And, if consumers won’t go traveling, merchants will bring the goods to them. Worldpay recently teamed up to help merchants using its payment processing solutions make their business travel farther, too. The company has partnered with Turkey- and Eastern Europe-focused payment provider iyzico. The collaboration will enable merchants to conduct more business in Turkey, with the ability to now process credit and debit card payments locally and accept payment from a local Turkish card brand and Turkish installment payment options, as well as with major global cards.

Meanwhile, merchants doing business in, or with, the European Union, are facing a new set of payment regulations. The PSD2 rules went into effect earlier this month, bringing with it policies intended to support greater participation of third-party players in the payment space and push forward open banking initiatives. The policies — which detail new consumer rights protection and electronic payment regulations — apply not only to intra-bloc transactions but also to those made between EU members and outside players.

Loyalty rewards that travel across franchises

Turning one loyal customer into two loyal customers sounds like a cloning operation, but a new loyalty rewards program is promising to turn this far-fetched concept into retail reality.

Chanticleer Holdings, which owns several restaurant franchises, is aiming to encourage customers not just to shop more at one brand, but to shop across all of them. This year, the company is rolling out a new kind of loyalty rewards program, that allows customers to earn points at any of Chanticleer’s venues and redeem them at any other, including cross-franchise.

Mobivity, an intelligent, personalized marketing platform provider, is delivering the blockchain tech to make this loyalty program happen. In this month’s feature story, Corey O’Donnell, Mobivity senior vice president of marketing, spoke to PYMNTS about how this kind of flexible rewards program can win over consumers and provide businesses with deeper insights into their preferences and behaviors.

To read the full scoop, plus the latest headlines and a provider directory of more than 100 players in the PaaS space, download the Tracker.

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About the Tracker

The Payments as a Service Tracker™ is designed to give an overview of the trends and activities of merchant platforms that not only enable payment processing of new and old technologies, but also integrate with other features to improve the merchant’s experience, including customer engagement, security, omnichannel retail, analytics, inventory management, software and hardware management and more.